“Political Correctness” Is Politically Correct, Too!

At last week’s Republican National Convention, Arkansas Attorney General, Leslie Rutledge, drew applause for saying, “I’m a Christian, pro-life, gun- carrying, conservative woman.” This was the same convention featuring a US Flag bandana collecting no sweat on the brow of one of the characters from Duck Dynasty.

Identity politics no longer belong to the left.

Political correctness is usually, and for good reason, associated with the left. It is a form of politeness and caution to offend that prevails over true and serious talk. It is the thinnest of skin, allergic to everything eligible for offense. It is when scapegoating language is used loosely and lazily, substituting for thought and argument.

It is remarkable how the right has turned the expression “political correctness” into a form of political correctness. When someone says that so-and-so is not “politically correct” to a crowd of conservatives, the reaction is to clap and cheer. It happened many times in Cleveland last week. This is a textbook example of political correctness.

When someone takes exception to something offensive, the exception can now be dismissed out of hand as a case of political correctness. This could be the case if the offense is false. But if the thing is indeed offensive, then there is nothing so politically correct as this out of hand dismissal.

There is a fine line between identity politics and political correctness when they are used to describe cases of real intellectual laziness and ideological overgeneralization, on the one hand, and the very language of “identity politics” and “political correctness” used as intellectually lazy and ideologically overgeneralizing, on the other.

The knee-jerk reaction to see who is to more or less to blame is equally as juvenile when both parties are guilty. Yet today this is a normal part of political discourse.

If you use expressions that are meant to label lazy and unfair talk in lazy and unfair ways, then you have fallen victim to your own object of contempt.

Trump fans who claim to hate political correctness have shown their true feelings: they love political correctness so much, they have created a new rightwing identity politics for expressing political correctness, to chants and applause, as they decry “political correctness.”

In other words, thanks to Trump, “political correctness” is politically correct, too!